The following is a letter I sent to The Lutheran Witness in reference to an article in their February 2008 edition. I don’t think it will see the light of day, so I thought I would give it some here.
Lutheran Education
Our Large Catechism addresses the education of our children under the Fourth Commandment: “For all authority flows and is propagated from the authority of parents. For where a father is unable alone to educate his child, he employs a schoolmaster to instruct him(141).” We confess that the first, the preferable, way to educate children is for the father to do it. If he, in conjunction with his wife is unable to do it, then he should employ a schoolmaster. Lutheran education should be seen as flowing not from the state or church, but from the home. What every Lutheran pastor and church, even those with day schools, should be doing is admonishing parents to take personal responsibility for the education of their children. Lutheran homeschoolers have done just this, and the fact that our synod doesn’t mention and promote this is telling. Continue reading
Posted in Families, For Anyone who dares
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“Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign”…So Where’s the Real Thing?
The movie Stand By Me opens with a man (Richard Dreyfus) sitting in his car wondering if anyone has friends like they did when they were 12? At 12 and through my teen years I had a friend named Eric. Eric was a rebel, but a polite one. His favorite movie was Easy Rider, but when he came of age, he didn’t ride around the country in a chopped Harley. No, he had a Suzuki 500. I rode on the back of that with him throughout the state of Kentucky. Eric’s favorite song was “Signs.” He would sing with great gusto the part about “do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign.” Because of the “magic” of XM radio, I heard that song again. It reminded me of Eric. I could see him jumping up on the fence, as in the song, and shouting, “If God were here he tell it to you face/ Man you’re some kind of sinner.” And then my thoughts went a completely different direction. Continue reading
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Birth Control and Animal Control
A wiser man than I said, “For every current book you read, read five at least 100 years old.” I would modify that a bit and say, “For every 19th, 20th, or 21st century book you read, read five from before then.”
One old book worth reading is Plutarch’s Lives of the Nobel Greeks (His Lives of the Nobel Romans is good as well.). In his entry about the hero of Athens’s, Pericles, he begins with this rather stunning observation by Caesar: Continue reading
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You Can’t Get there From Here
I once observed in a paper on another subject that one of the most frustrating things to hear when asking for directions is, “You can’t get there from here.” What? Aren’t all roads connected? There has got to be some way to get from where I am in physical space to another physical space. True enough about physical realities, but there are some spiritual realities you can’t get to from where a person is at the moment. Continue reading
Posted in Ablaze, Contemporary Worship
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Amen to that!
I was celebrating the Lord’s Supper one Sunday about 4 years ago. I said the dismissal, “Now may this Body and Blood strengthen and preserve you in the true faith unto life everlasting. Amen.” As I said, “Amen,” I heard a visiting communicant say in a loud, affirming voice, “Amen!” I was taken aback. Continue reading
Posted in For Anyone who dares, For Pastors Only
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On Receptionism and Touching the Ground
I was raised in the era when the Flag touching the ground was an unforgivable sin. My time in the Army reinforced this. When I flew the Flag from the flagpole outside our church the Sunday after 9/11, I was careful not to let it touch the ground.
Among the Greeks and Romans, one of their idols falling over and touching the ground was a big deal, a bad omen, something to be avoided at all costs. Centuries before them, the Philistine’s god, Dagon, was disgraced when the Lord caused that idol to fall “downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord” (I Samuel 5:3). My favorite apocryphal story about Baby Jesus’ flight to Egypt is that as soon as He crossed into Egypt all the idols crashed to the ground at once. How cool!
But I write not about the Flag touching the ground or false gods touching the ground, I write about the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, touching the ground. Continue reading
Posted in For Anyone who dares, For Pastors Only
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A Tale of Two Jackasses
One of my favorite apocryphal stories about Jesus goes like this: Jesus, Mother Mary, and Joseph are fleeing the wrath of King Herod heading for Egypt. They are all riding on the back of a donkey. Joseph becomes impatient with the slow progress of the beast, and he begins to dig his heels into the animal. This doesn’t do any good, so he resorts to whipping the plodding donkey saying, “You stupid, good for nothing donkey! Don’t you know that you are carrying the Christ-child? Don’t you realize that Herod is out to slay the child? Don’t you know that you must hurry or he will catch us?” Just then the Lord gives the donkey the gift of speech. Continue reading
Posted in Ablaze, For Anyone who dares, For Pastors Only
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Almost a Christian
In the movie 300, Leonidas is leaving with his small band of men to fight the invading million man army of the Persians. He bids his wife goodbye. As he marches away to certain death she calls out to him, “Spartan!” Not “king” which he was but “Spartan.” His glory is not in ruling but in being a Spartan.
So it is with pastors. Our glory is not Continue reading
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A Happy Christmas
Driving from Texas to Michigan in December 1977 John Lennon’s “Happy Christmas” seemed to be on all the radio stations. At that time in my twenty-year-old life Lennon’s melancholy lyrics particularly the line “so this is Christmas, and what have we have done, another year older, and a new one begun,” expressed my understanding of what Christmas was suppose to be. Continue reading
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